Search form

Brexit Update: Talks Reach Crunch And “No Deal” A Strong Possibility

Where Brexit negotiations are concerned, we have reached (as they say in Britain) “squeaky bum time.” The triggering of Article 50 on March 29th 2017 started a 2-year countdown for the UK and EU to negotiate a withdrawal agreement for a binding international treaty. Yet just 5 months from deadline, the EU’s position on Northern Ireland and a lack of domestic support for Prime Minister Theresa May’s desired long-term trading relationship mean a no deal Brexit in March remains a real possibility (the tweet linked here quotes Britain’s trade minister Liam Fox).

True, much of the withdrawal agreement has been long agreed. A transition period through to 31 December 2020 is planned to essentially keep the UK within the EU’s economic institutions (the single market and customs union), though reports suggest both sides might be willing to extend this for an extra year. Free movement of people would continue for this period, and the UK would pay £39 billion into the EU budget. Importantly, though Article 50 states that a withdrawal agreement must take account of the longer term post-exit relationship, this is not going to be achieved in time: the agreement would merely be accompanied with a joint, loose-languaged political declaration on the future framework.

But it’s here where difficulties have arisen, and most center around the Northern Irish border. Both sides have said from the start that, post-Brexit, they want to keep the border between the Republic of Ireland (an EU state) and Northern Ireland (part of the UK) free of physical infrastructure and associated interventions at politically-sensitive crossings. But making that commitment self-evidently necessitates a trade relationship. Given long-term trade arrangements will not be agreed in the withdrawal agreement, the EU has therefore insisted that the withdrawal deal itself contain backstop provisions to ensure the border remained open should another arrangement or trade deal incorporating not be agreed.

This is what led last December to the UK and EU agreeing in principle to a fudged “backstop” position on Northern Ireland. In vintage legalese, the text stated: “In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement.”

Given the UK government has said repeatedly that the UK would be leaving the EU customs union and single market, this text raised Brexiteer eyebrows. Yes, the UK government agreed this to kick forward future trade relationship talks, and in the hope it would not be ultimately necessary. But talk of full alignment left ambiguity, and the potential for the backstop itself to keep the UK locked into Brussels’ regulatory and customs orbit. However much the UK government insisted that this language did not mean regulatory harmonization, but instead merely achieving shared regulatory goals via detailed sanitary rules, customs procedures, and the Single Energy Market, the backstop left an uncomfortable feeling that the UK had fallen into a trap.

This was not helped when the EU then rejected proposed “technological solutions” and “away from the border checks” that the UK insisted could have avoided the backstop. The unease intensified when, from February, the EU and Ireland began proposing a backstop arrangement where Northern Ireland alone would remain within the EU single market and customs union to ensure a soft border. This was something out of kilter not only with the text but with the wishes of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist party which props up the Conservative minority government.

This is all significant because Brexiteers fear now that the Northern Irish border has become the tail wagging the dog not just on the backstop, but on the potential future long-term trade relationship between the EU and UK. They fear the UK is being hoodwinked into a Brexit-in-name-only by threats of breaking up the UK through saying that only a soft Brexit can keep the Northern Irish border without physical infrastructure.

The Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposals for a longer-term trade relationship (known as the Chequers Plan) is Exhibit A. Rather than aiming for the best trade arrangements and then seeking to minimize disruption at the Irish border, the plan seems explicitly designed to keep the border as frictionless as possible, at the cost of an extraordinary loss of policy freedom. Chequers proposes a common rulebook between the UK and the EU on goods and agri-goods trade but not services, where fears of Brussels regulating the City of London alone without a UK vote were reason enough alone for exclusion. Non-regression-like clauses on environmental and labor laws would be included. A complex facilitated customs arrangement would see the UK collect the EU’s tariffs on its behalf.

This deal has proven anathema to most Conservative Brexiteers, binding as it does the UK to EU goods regulation without voting power over it and stripping away the bargaining chip of goods regulation in making liberalising trade deals with third parties. They see Chequers as an unnecessary loss of sovereignty, and want Theresa May to “Chuck Chequers” and instead negotiate with the aim of a whole of UK FTA and practical solutions at the border.

Incidentally, the EU doesn’t like Chequers either. They rightly see it as cherry-picking parts of the single market, are suspicious of a foreign government collecting its duties and would prefer even tighter integration of lots of regulations (including commitments for full harmonization on labor and environmental laws), such that the UK cannot secure a competitive advantage. Political commentators in the know say Chequers is dead as far as the EU is concerned.

In the EU’s eyes, the preferred long-term options have always been a Canada-style free trade agreement, or maintained UK membership of the single market and a customs union (in essence, a political Brexit but not an economic Brexit). Most Brexiteers very much prefer the former, which comes with more regulatory and trade policy freedoms.

This brings us to the crux of the current political crisis. May’s government have thus far lined up with the EU (and against Brexiteer insistence otherwise) in stating that it’s impossible to solve the border problem satisfactorily through an ordinary UK-EU free trade deal and other practical solutions. They imply that with a Canada-style FTA, Northern Ireland alone would have to remain tied to EU economic institutions to avoid a hard border, effectively creating an economic border down the Irish Sea. Conveniently, May claims that only something like her Chequers plan can avoid this.

But with Chequers seemingly without much support at home or in the EU, the future relationship talks have effectively stalled. With so much uncertainty about it, the backstop agreement has taken center-stage, because de facto that could become the default relationship. And here Brexiteer fears have heightened. Since May insists no UK government would countenance Northern Ireland having different customs arrangements from Britain, she has proposed the whole of the UK remaining in a customs union-like arrangement as a backstop.

Earlier this year she suggested this would last for an extra year beyond transition (to December 2021) and Brexiteers are still keen on this kind of time limit. But the EU says that a backstop cannot be time-limited, because otherwise it’s not a backstop. Brexiteers winced this week when the PM’s position seemingly “evolved” in the EU’s direction, with her suggesting remaining in a customs arrangement as a backstop on a “temporary” but indefinite basis. These fears heightened with news that the EU believed there was not enough time to discuss a UK-wide backstop proposal, and insisting that the withdrawal agreement incorporate a “backstop to a backstop,” with a Northern Ireland-only customs arrangement should a full UK-wide agreement fail to be agreed.

For many Brexiteers, the major economic benefit of Brexit is the ability to conduct independent trade policy, cutting deals and setting tariffs. An indefinite customs arrangement threatens this. Given the EU would seemingly prefer the whole of the UK to remain within its economic institutions, a non-time-limited customs backstop provides little incentive for the EU to agree to a future comprehensive free trade deal the Brexiteers desire.

Combined with Chequers then, Brexiteers fear a huge sell out is on the cards. The UK government’s official position has always been that the country will leave the EU single market and customs union. But now both Chequers and the backstop risk are seen to keep the UK within these arrangements to varying degrees.

The result is a political crisis. The PM this week updated the house on the negotiations but could not provide assurances any customs arrangement backstop would be time-limited. She has since floated and then rowed back on extending the transition period, something that would see UK taxpayers pay for at least another year of EU funding, without settling the backstop issue.

As a result, everyone is unhappy. There is talk of Brexiteers dethroning May as a last gasp attempt to push for the Canada FTA-type deal the EU has offered. The DUP are threatening to derail the government’s domestic legislative agenda should the PM allow Northern Ireland to be treated differently. The hardline Remainers, meanwhile, are pressing for a second referendum on any withdrawal agreement May brings back.

With the clock ticking, and stakes rising, the prospect of no deal is therefore heightening. The EU has engineered a situation where in the long-term it insists either the UK must sign up to a backstop where Northern Ireland must be effectively economically annexed, or the UK must remain locked in the EU’s regulatory and customs embrace itself.

The Brexiteers (to my mind rightly) consider this unacceptable. Ignoring whether a change of Prime Minister or strategy is perceived as bad faith negotiating by the UK, it does not seem an extreme position to say that the EU should not have the right to dictate the economic breakup of a sovereign country, nor determine its domestic economic regulations. But at such a late stage and in such a febrile political environment, who knows where this multi-actor game of chicken ends?